The human brain's complexity makes it extremely challenging to study—not only because of its sheer size, but also because of the variety of signaling methods it uses simultaneously. Conventional neural ...

Sure, the International CES show was chock full of connected cars, smart home sensors, music gear and computer gadgets, as you'd expect. There were even drones buzzing the 160,000-plus people that tromped ...

Spinal cord stimulator implants could use less power and be made much smaller as work from Taiwan and Israel eliminates off-chip high-voltage devices from the implant's pulse generator. This will reduce implant-related ...

MIT researchers have demonstrated a highly flexible neural probe made entirely of polymers that can both optically stimulate and record neural activity in a mouse spinal cord—a step toward developing prosthetic ...

Researchers at the University of Cambridge have managed to reconstruct the early stage of mammalian development using embryonic stem cells, showing that a critical mass of cells – not too few, but not too ...

Better control of prosthetic limbs and better treatment of diseases like Parkinson's motivates Polina Anikeeva, the AMAX Assistant Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, to develop both flexible ...

A senior editor at IEEE Spectrum worked on a DIY project that enabled his 11-year-old son to improve his touch typing by use of a vibrating glove. His son was already "pretty quick on the keyboard," said ...

By understanding the secret of how lizards regenerate their tails, researchers may be able to develop ways to stimulate the regeneration of limbs in humans. Now, a team of researchers from Arizona State University ...

University of Kentucky biologist Randal Voss is sequencing the genome of salamanders. Though we share many of the same genes, the salamander genome is massive compared to our own, about 10 times as large.

A trip to the veterinarian may prove fatal to a horse, even if it is not necessary to put the animal down. In Europe if the horse is found to be ataxic, which is most often due to the disease 'wobbler syndrome', ...

Neural probe arrays are expected to significantly benefit the lives of amputees and people affected by spinal cord injuries or severe neuromotor diseases. By providing a direct route of communication between ...

The US ambassador to Japan should visit Taiji to see the "humane" killing methods used in the dolphin hunt, a local fisheries official said Tuesday, days after Caroline Kennedy tweeted her disapproval of ...

As fish go, the lamprey has to be one of the most repulsive. Its eel-like body culminates in a tooth-encrusted sucker mouth straight out of a sci-fi horror film. Yet it turns out the lamprey, the most primitive ...

Spinal cord

The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular bundle of nervous tissue and support cells that extends from the brain. The brain and spinal cord together make up the central nervous system. Enclosed within, and protected by, the bony vertebral column, the spinal cord functions primarily in the transmission of neural signals between the brain and the rest of the body, but also contains neural circuits that can independently control numerous reflexes and central pattern generators.